


Navigate the Stars

by adiwriting



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex gets deployed, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, boys having real conversations about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24896455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adiwriting/pseuds/adiwriting
Summary: Alex doesn't know how to deal with his fear and anger, so he takes it out on Michael.Prompt: getting lost somewhere
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 25
Kudos: 138





	Navigate the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is me working out Michael and Alex's voices through some prompt fills. Still getting back into the swing of writing in general.

“Can’t you like, navigate us home by the stars or some shit?” 

“Why? Because I’m part Navajo?” Alex asks, annoyed. “Sure. Let me just do a rain dance, smoke the peace pipe, and build us a tepee while we’re at it.” 

“That’s not what I meant,” Michael says with a dramatic sigh and a roll of his eyes. “I just meant, didn’t they train you for this kind of shit in the military?” 

Alright, that’s fair. The Air Force did indeed train him for this exact kind of situation. Not that Alex will tell Michael that. 

“I cannot believe you got us lost,” is what Alex says instead. 

“This is why I don’t do nice things for you,” Michael grumbles and Alex can just feel Michael’s rant coming. 

“I’m sorry, nice things?” he scoffs. Were they or were they not lost in the middle of the desert instead of cuddled up on the couch with Netflix? 

“Why don’t you ever take me anywhere nice, Michael? Why don’t we do more things together, Michael?” 

“Don’t even start with me,” Alex groans. “At what point did I ever give you the impression that this was what I wanted?” 

“You literally shoved all of Max and Liz’s camping pictures in my face the other day,” Michael complains. “Kept going on and on about romance. Of course I thought that this was what you wanted.” 

“I am about to ship off for six months to a country that has no established base. I am going to be camping for god knows how long until we can get shit set up. Why on Earth would I want to spend my last weekend with my boyfriend in the middle of the desert?” 

“Fine, your boyfriend’s a fuck up. What do you want me to say?” Michael says, and the sad look on his face has Alex turning away. He’s not ready to give up his anger just yet. 

“Oh my god, this is not getting us anywhere,” Alex grumbles as he looks up at the stars and tries to remember which constellations he’s supposed to be looking for to guide them back to camp. The last time he did this, he was on the other side of the world. 

Michael sighs and throws his stuff on the ground, clearly giving up on them ever finding their way back. 

“What are you really mad at?” Michael asks him. 

“You!” He’d thought that much was obvious. 

“No. No. See, you do this every time,” Michael says. “Every damn time you’ve been deployed, you find a reason to be mad at me. A reason to push me away before you leave. I thought we were done with this. When we got back together, you promised me that you were past this shit.” 

“When we got back together I didn’t think I was going to get deployed again did I?” he practically yells, annoyed that Michael would even bring that up again. Didn’t they also promise each other to stop bringing up their past mistakes and move forward? 

“Why are you yelling at me?” Michael asks, and the sadness in his voice only fuels Alex’s anger. 

This is so fucking stupid.

“I’m missing a leg!” he yells, because he can. Because nobody else is around to overhear them. “When I reenlisted to keep you all safe, I was missing a leg. I literally thought I was safe from being deployed to a potential war zone, because I’m disabled. But no, some idiots had to go champion for disabled rights and now I’m apparently the only person with the proper expertise for this deployment. It’s bullshit. I’ve served enough!” 

“Okay,” Michael says, too calmly for Alex’s taste. 

“Haven’t I already given enough for this fucking country?” 

“Okay,” Michael says again, standing up to walk over to him with his arms up in surrender. 

“It’s utter bullshit!” 

“Okay,” he says, wrapping Alex in a hug. 

“Stop saying that!” he argues, refusing to hug him back. He’s not in the mood to be soothed. He wants to yell and scream and break things. 

“O— Sorry,” Michael says. 

They both fall quiet and Michael continues to hold him while Alex’s anger calms. 

“I don’t want to go,” Alex whispers, scared to put that out there. He’s an airman. Airmen accept the deployments handed to them with pride, ready to serve and protect. 

“I don’t want you to go,” Michael whispers back. 

He wraps his arms around Michael’s hips and lays his head against his shoulder, enjoying the feeling of Michael’s hands rubbing soothing circles on his back. He’s going to miss this. He fought so hard to finally have this, and now he’s terrified of losing it. 

“We could run away,” Michael says softly. “They can’t make you do this.” 

“And go AWOL?” Alex says, taking a moment to contemplate the idea. He’d never do that. Michael knows he’d never do that. Still, it’s a nice fantasy. “Where would we go?” 

“Anywhere. You know I’ve never seen anything outside of New Mexico,” he says. “We could go visit Max and Liz in California.” 

“LA?” Alex says with disgust. “Pass.” 

“We could get a place up in the mountains. Colorado maybe?” Michael suggests. “You were saying that you missed living in Jim Valenti’s cabin.” 

“Is this your way of telling me that you’re finally ready to move in together?” Alex asks. 

“Move in together?” Michael scoffs. “I already sleep at your place every night of the week. Just because I haven’t sold my airstream—” 

“Doesn’t mean that you’re not committed, I know,” Alex finishes for him. 

They’ve already had this discussion numerous times. Alex wants Michael to sell the airstream and put the money towards something for himself. School. Starting his own business. Something. The airstream is just sitting there, not being used. Meanwhile, Michael doesn’t have the finances to do any of the things he claims he wants to do with his life. 

At least… that’s Alex’s argument to Michael. Secretly, he’s a lot more selfish in his dislike of the airstream. Alex hates the idea that Michael has such an easy out of their relationship. That at any given time, he could just pack up and leave because he has somewhere else to go. 

But he gets it. Michael grew up without a home for so long and he saved up for a long time to have something he could buy outright. Something that nobody would ever be able to take away from him. Alex gets why Michael feels the need to hang onto that. He doesn’t like it, but he gets it. 

The two of them fall into silence again, but it’s not uncomfortable. Alex is enjoying just being with Michael. 

“Do you really think it’s wrong for disabled men to get deployed?” Michael asks. 

“No,” Alex says with a sigh. Now that he’s no longer enraged, he regrets his rant. He’d have cursed out anyone else he’d heard say that. It’s some ableist nonsense. “Disabled soldiers are just as capable as everyone else. If they get cleared by medical, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to serve. Some of this country's best men have been injured in battle… If they are willing to go back out there, it’s to our country’s benefit to let them.” 

“But you said…” 

“I know,” Alex says, pulling away from him enough to be able to look him in the eyes. “But I didn’t mean it.” 

“No?” There’s that little bit of old insecurity in Michael’s eyes as he says it. 

It’s been a few months since Alex has seen it. Things between them have been so good that Alex had naively hoped that it was gone forever. But it doesn’t surprise him that he’s seeing it now. Alex going off to war has always been a difficult thing for both of them. Their relationship has never survived a deployment. This time, Alex is determined to break that trend. 

“Well not the disabled part. I help champion for disabled rights in the military. I can’t very well complain that I’m being treated like everyone else, can I?” 

Michael’s eyes go to the ground and refuse to meet his own. 

“The only reason you reenlisted was to keep me safe, and now they are sending you to a war you don’t want to fight.” 

Alex’s stomach drops as he curses himself for that slip of his tongue. He never should have said that either. He’s 0 for 2 tonight. 

“Hey,” Alex says, grabbing onto Michael’s face gently and getting him to look at him. “Keeping you safe was a reason to reenlist but it wasn’t the main reason to reenlist.” 

“No?” He looks doubtful. 

“Project Shepard is my family’s legacy, and I needed to see it through. I needed to make sure it stayed dismantled. And yes, doing so kept you safe and that’s great, but I needed to do that for me. To be able to heal from all my shit with my dad,” Alex explains, hoping Michael gets it. 

“I don’t want to lose you,” Michael says. “Every time you go off to war, it’s my fault.” 

“What?” Alex says. He’d thought he’d heard all of Michael’s crazy insecurities by now, but this is a new one. 

“Your dad only made you join the Air Force after he caught us together,” Michael says. “And every time your enlistment period was up, I did something to scare you back into it... I don’t want to be the reason that you keep going to war. Because one of these days I’m going to scare you back into it and you’re not going to make it home.” 

Michael starts to cry and each tear stabs at his heart. 

“Okay, that was a lot.” Alex gives a small laugh as he starts to cry too. He’s been getting better tackling Michael’s emotional dumps and not running away when they happen. It’s still not easy and his first instinct is always to run, or ignore it with the distraction of sex, but he’s trying. 

“But… I’ll try to tackle it,” Alex says. “For starters, my dad was always going to push me into the Air Force. Sure, I had plans to make music and go to college, and my dad threatening you is the reason why I didn’t rebel. But he was always going to find a way to get me to enlist. His evil knows no bounds and he would never have been okay with a son not upholding the family legacy. As for the rest… I was stupid and young. And you didn’t scare me back to war. You only ever offered me a home and a family, and I was too broken to accept.” 

“And now?” 

“And now, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. The only thing that’s predictable about war is that it’s unpredictable.” 

Michael’s eyes go back to the ground, but Alex chases them until Michael meets his gaze again. 

“I can promise you that I’m going to fight like hell to get back to you. That I’m no longer young and stupid. I know what I’m doing and while I can’t control what happens, I’m not going to make stupid mistakes out there. Not when I have a wonderful man waiting for me at home.” 

“Yeah?” Michael looks doubtful and Alex realizes that he’s never actually assured Michael that they aren’t breaking up during this deployment. He’d just assumed that much was obvious, but perhaps not. Perhaps Michael still needs the actual words. 

“Yeah,” Alex says with what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “I’m in this. If you’re in this, I’m in this. We survived ten years apart, we can survive six months.” 

Michael nods and attempts to nonchalantly wipe his eyes like Alex could somehow have missed the fact that he’s been crying. Still, Alex has enough tact to ignore it. 

“I’ll call as much as I can,” Alex assures him, settling his hands on Michael’s hips and pulling him closer. “Though it might be spotty until we get things established there.” 

“I’ll write.” 

“You’ll write?” Alex teases him. “You barely send texts.” 

“I will write,” Michael promises, wrapping his arms around Alex’s shoulders and leaning his forehead against his own. 

“Good.” 

Getting letters from home are some of the only things that make war bearable. Alex rarely got any in the past, but the handful of letters he’d received from Maria, Liz, and Greg over the years had certainly brightened his days. Alex has always missed Michael during deployments, but this time he’s positive it’s going to hurt even more. Letters will help. 

“I’ve gotta remind you what you’ve got waiting for you at home,” Michael says with a teasing smile that lets him know the serious moment has passed. “Can’t have you shacking up with any sexy airmen all brokeback style.” 

Alex laughs at that. “Never.” 

“Good.” Michael kisses him before dropping his hands and walking back over to pick up his backpack. “Now let’s find our camp for real. I’m starving and horny, and I’d much rather have sex in a tent than on the ground.” 

“It wouldn’t be the first time we’d had sex in the middle of the desert,” Alex reminds him. 

Michael looks up in surprise as Alex sends him a knowing look. 

“Well sure,” Michael says with a smile, reaching out for his hand. “But that was when I was living in a truck and didn’t have other options. And it was a one time thing. I had dirt and sand places that one never really should.” 

“Fair,” Alex says with a laugh as Michael leans in to give him another kiss. 

Alex takes a deep breath, assuring himself that things are going to be okay. He then looks up at the sky and, now that he has a clear head, can clearly see which direction they need to head. 

“Come on, camp is this way,” Alex says, tugging on his hand. 

“Did you just navigate by the stars?”

One glance at Michael’s face tells him that he’s never going to hear the end of this. 

“Shut up,” he says with a blush. “It’s part of our training.” 

“Oh! Part of your training? You mean you didn’t learn that on the reservation? You aren’t going to do a rain dance for me?” Michael laughs, and god… Alex doesn’t even care that Michael teases him the entire twenty minute walk back to camp, because Alex is really going to miss that smile when he’s gone.


End file.
